Juice Response

Juice, by Renee Gladman, is a very poetically structured story. It is without a doubt, a poem that tells a story. Like most poetry, for me, it was a bit hard to follow. It is a book written with a lot of detail at an almost obsessive level. The story the book tells is not what makes it interesting. It's the massive amount of obsessive detail that kept me interested. It was also very non linear. She describes events that took place years before, and years later. It was hard to pinpoint where and when anything was happening. It was detailed in just about everything save for a specific setting and time. It seems to be based in a city like area sometime in the 20th century, but that's all I can deduce as far as that goes. Something I found interesting was how Gladman literally puts herself in the story as a character. Her character even tells the narrator to detail her life completely (Page 56). Detail is obviously important to Renee Gladman. The book really is just a character study of sorts. A study of the narrator and the study of many others by the narrator. It also seems to be a book about change. The narrator's hometown changes drastically, her sister changes drastically, and the narrator herself changes drastically. They change so much that they don't recognize each other at the museum. One thing I never understood was the meaning of the juice. The book is titled "Juice" and the character seemed to enjoy juice, but the meaning of this went over my head.